The morning after Horatio and the guards see the ghost, King Claudius speaks to his courtiers, explaining his marriage to Gertrude, the dead king’s widow wife and the mother of Prince Hamlet. Claudius says that he misses his brother but has chosen to lessen Denmark’s mourning by his marriage with Gertrude. He mentions that Fortinbras has written to him, demanding the surrender of the lands that King Hamlet won from Fortinbras’s father.
His speech ended, Claudius turns to Laertes, the son of Polonius. Laertes expresses his desire to return to France, where he was staying before his return to Denmark for Claudius’s coronation. Polonius gives him permission, and Claudius grants Laertes his consent as well.

Turning to Prince Hamlet, Claudius asks why “the clouds still hang” upon him, as Hamlet still wears black mourning clothes. Gertrude urges him to take off his “nightly colour,” but he replies bitterly that his inner sorrow is so much that his appearance is just a poor reflection of it. Using fatherly advice, Claudius says that all fathers die, and all sons will lose their fathers. When a son loses a father, he is meant to mourn, but to mourn for too long is unmanly and inappropriate. Claudius tells Hamlet to think of him as a father, reminding Hamlet that he stands in line to succeed to the throne after Claudius’s death.

Claudius then says that he does not wish for Hamlet to return to school at Wittenberg (where he had been studying before his father’s death), as Hamlet wanted to do. Gertrude repeats her husband, showing a desire for Hamlet to stay close to her. Hamlet forcefully agrees to do that. Claudius says that he is very pleased by Hamlet’s decision to stay that he will celebrate with parties and cannon fire, an old tradition called “the king’s rouse.”

now alone, Hamlet expresses that he wishes he could die, that he could evaporate and cease to exist. He wishes that God had not made suicide a sin. Anguished, he mourns his father’s death and his mother’s fast marriage to his uncle. He remembers how much his parents loved each other, and the thought that now, not yet two months after his father’s death, his mother marries his uncle, angers him.